He and Hester have an open conversation regarding their marriage and the fact that they were both in the wrong. After she returns to her prison cell, the jailer brings in Chillingworth, now a physician, to calm Hester and her child with his roots and herbs. The Reverend John Wilson and the minister of Hester's church, Arthur Dimmesdale, question her, but she refuses to name her lover.

He chooses a new name, Roger Chillingworth, to aid him in his plan. He angrily exclaims that the child's father should also be punished for his immoral act and vows to find the man.

When the husband sees Hester's shame, he asks a man in the crowd about her and is told the story of his wife's pregnancy. When commanded and cajoled to name the father of her child, Hester refuses.Īs Hester looks out over the crowd, she notices a small, misshapen man and recognizes him as her long-lost husband, who had been presumed lost at sea. As Hester approaches the scaffold, many of the women in the crowd are angered by her beauty and quiet dignity. Her sentence requires her to stand on the scaffold for three hours, exposed to public humiliation, and to wear a scarlet 'A' for the rest of her life. In Puritan Boston, Massachusetts, a crowd gathers to witness the punishment of Hester Prynne, a young woman who has given birth to a baby of unknown paternity. Hester Prynne and Pearl in the foreground, Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth in background. The Scarlet Letter by Hugues Merle (1861). Lawrence called it a 'perfect work of the American imagination'. Critics have described The Scarlet Letter as a masterwork, and novelist D. The novel has inspired numerous film, television, and stage adaptations. It was popular when first published and is considered a classic work of American literature. The Scarlet Letter was one of the first mass-produced books in the United States. Containing a number of religious and historic allusions, the book explores themes of legalism, sin and guilt. As punishment, she must wear a scarlet letter 'A' (for ' adultery'). Set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony during the years 1642 to 1649, the novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter with a man to whom she is not married and then struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is a work of historical fiction by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850.

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